A recent article in the Washington Post stated that Democratic leaders plan to "link the Republican Party to some of the most extreme elements of the 'tea party' movement, seeking to define all GOP candidates as outside the mainstream by highlighting such tea party talking points as ending Medicare and privatizing Social Security."

Moderate and/or sensible Republicans have not been heard from much during this campaign. Do they still exist?

Will the Dem strategy of painting all Republicans as tea baggers work?

I honestly don't know why they are wasting valuable energy proving something that doesn't have to bear proof? I don't have exact numbers; but I doubt all Republicans are part of that Tea Party bunch. Republicans will divide themselves without the interference from Democrats. In fact...the Dem plan may backfire. Instead of dividing...they may unite the moderate Republicans and crazy right wing Tea Party loonies...

The plan itself is a backfire. We need politicians and parties who run on their own merit and ideas rather than on a platform consisting of tales of how bad the other guys are.

This is going to look like a witch hunt and the same kind of McCarthyism the Dems and their followers have accused the other side of.

You would only characterize it as a "witch hunt" if you thought being a Teabagger was a bad thing. If you think it's a good thing, you aren't going to get annoyed if people associate you with it.

Lots of prominent Republican office-holders (current and former) are trying to insinuate and ingratiate themselves with the Tea Party.... Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin come to mind right off the bat.



Well, yeah! But this has never happened during my lifetime, and I don't have high hopes of it before I die, either. It seems to me as though the polarization of the two major parties has increased exponentially since the Clinton administration, during which the Republicans pilloried and persecuted Clinton because of his infidelity, to the point that it interfered with his running of the nation. The resulting mutual antagonism between Democrats and Conservatives has only grown stronger since then, to a point of religious-like fervor. I detect actual hatred of the other party in lots of people... not just disagreement, but hatred that should be reserved for Nazis and other evil people.

What would it take to start healing this divide?

This is especially true in parts of the South, where many people never stopped hating blacks and Democrats and liberals from the gitgo. Where they once only had the occasional inflammatory newspaper or magazine article, or John Birch Society literature in their mailbox to power up their hatred engines, they now have access to numerous instant hi-tech daily hate pit stops on Fox News and people like Limbaugh and Hannity and Coulter.

I made the mistake of voicing an opposing in-your-face opinion to some people on Facebook once a few months ago who were actively engaged in a little one-sided Obama bash, and I immediately got several nasty e-mails insulting my intelligence and questioning my common sense. One guy told me "We know where you live _____."

I have former friends down South who won't talk to me now because they found out I voted for Obama...btw they openly refer to him as "Our Nigger." And even though many of these same people (or their parents) are on Medicare plus get Social Security checks, they are quick to badmouth long dead Democrats like FDR, JFK, and LBJ, who were largely responsible for both these programs, not to mention the Civil Rights Voting Act, which they still see as a huge mistake. Some of these folks still long for the good old days of Jim Crow, and they see the GOP as the vehicle which might actually one day take them there.

They don't give a shit if the deficit-funded Bush Tax cuts only benefited the wealthy, or that many of their manufacturing jobs have been outsourced to India and China, or that the Wall Streeters are responsible for their plant closings or their houses being foreclosed on.

The media propaganda outlets have pumped so much tripe into their heads they can't think for themselves. It's easier to blame it all on Obama and the gun-grabbers and the gays and the liberals, etc. George Carlin was right. The corporate bastards own us, and they're gonna do everything in their power to keep us in line and busting our butts on their plantation. Lackey Republicans or lackey Democrats. What's the difference?